Monthly Archives: February 2014

Few spy thrillers have plots that are as implausible as the reality presented to French military intelligence in 1904. A German officer presented himself and offered to sell top secret war plans. He called himself “The Avenger” and met his handlers with his face entirely wrapped in bandages. The facts were so implausible that it was dismissed as a German ruse. If they had taken the […]

Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 25 February 2014 The British Civil Wars are not part of citizenship tests because they are deemed too sensitive a subject The British Civil Wars of the 17th century are, according to the Home Office, too raw a subject for citizenship lessons. A Home Office publication surveying British history for immigrants omits the entire period of the Civil Wars on the grounds […]

It was the glorious culmination of a history that started when Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic. The New World had come together, uniting all the peoples of the western hemisphere under a single, republican and democratic constitution. George Washington and the Founding Fathers were joined by Simón Bolívar and his Spanish-speaking liberators. The United States of the Americas emerged from the turmoil that had erupted in […]

The United States of the Americas

One of the most enduring and awe inspiring legacies of the Normans are their castles. Located across the country, but concentrated in particularly problematic locations, the Norman castle was a manifestation of both royal power and the regime’s insecurity. As timber and mud gave way to stone and iron, castle building reached a climax in complexity and size until gunpowder and changing politics made them somewhat […]

Castle Country

What connects Fenland celery with Gruyère cheese? Cornish clotted cream with Prosciutto di Parma? Or Gloucestershire Old Spots Pork and Pizza Napoletana? They have all been granted Protected Geographical Status under EU law through the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) regimes respectively. Some of the most iconic food and drinks produced in the European Union benefit from […]

Protecting the best of British

Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 18 February 2014 Chinese men had to adopt a hairstyle to show submission to the emperor After a failed uprising, China’s Qing rulers issued an edict ordering all Chinese men to shave their forehead and to braid the rest of their hair into a hairstyle known in English as a ‘queue’ (or ‘cue’). This would make the Han majority identical to those […]

In the heart of the Dutch capital stands a gothic wonder set in immaculate grounds. It has the lofty bell tower and intricate brickwork that conjures images of the handsome guild houses and town halls of the prosperous trading centres of the low countries. But this is not an ancient building; it is the home of the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of […]

Opening the Peace Palace on the eve of war

Hiroshima and Nagasaki conjure images of lightning flashes and mushroom clouds; the terrifying power of atomic weapons and of once great cities reduced to smoking ash, twisted steel and molten corpses. Survival in the radioactive aftermath was, in many cases, a curse as Japan struggled to come to terms with the magnitude of the disaster. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the first choice targets. Instead, […]

Why was Kyoto removed as the prime target for the A-Bomb?

You’ve won the election and soon you’ll be sworn in as the governor of the state. What is top of your list of priorities? Fulfilling manifesto pledges? Dishing out patronage? Dealing with the legislature? One thing most of America’s state governors don’t have to worry about is where to live. All bar three states in the USA have official governors’ residencies. Governors of states in the […]

Governing in style

Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 11 February 2014 The assassin of Martin Luther King was arrested at Heathrow Airport James Earl Ray, the notorious assassin of Martin Luther King, was finally tracked down to London and arrested at Heathrow Airport on 8 June 1968. A subtle commemoration of Charles I You have to really strain to see it, and even then it could just be a spot […]

On 10 February 1906 the Royal Navy’s latest battleship was launched by King Edward VII. She was christened with an Australian wine in a bottle that famously failed to break on its first brush with the ship’s impressive stem. With this ritual, HMS Dreadnought was launched into Solent, stirring up waves that would be felt around the world. . Once every so often a technology develops […]

Dreadnought and the race to war

During the Industrial Revolution, Britain was completely transformed. It was transformed through technological development: steam, locomotion and railways. It was transformed by millions of pounds of capital backing increasingly ambitious, even audacious schemes. But, more than any other factor, it was physically transformed shovel load by backbreaking shovel load by the navvies. Navvies, short for ‘navigators’, were the men who actually built the wonders of the […]

Praising the unsung heroes

In an article called the English Aristocracy, Nancy Mitford declared that: “the English aristocracy may seem to be on the verge of decadence, but it is the only real aristocracy left in the world today”. She went on to say: “in England the Queen is the fountain of honours and when she bestows a peerage upon a subject she bestows something real and unique”. This is […]

Peering into the peerage

Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 4 February 2014 India has a prison wing dedicated for mothers-in-law A prison in India has a special wing for mothers-in-law. According to the Christmas special of the Economist, “among 12,000 prisoners at Delhi’s sprawling Tihar jail, a portion of female inmates are kept in a dedicated, barracks-like “mother-in-law wing”.